The purpose of this page is to give you important news, which will affect you directly as an allotment holder.
In its first publication we have to inform you about the legal status of the allotments as a whole and how this may be changing in the next few months.
In brief the Nottingham City Council currently leases the allotments to the association by way of trustees. Under this agreement we run the allotments ourselves and are responsible for their upkeep and maintenance, independently of the council. In return we are awarded a 75 % rebate on the rent we pay to the council each year to help us fund the cost of doing so. Under this agreement we have to provide the names of 3 or 4 trustees who have legal status and can be held personally liable for any costs that may result from dissolving the association or its mis-management. It’s an old fashioned system and unfortunately, as the current agreement is now some years old, most of our trustees are retired or deceased. This has left us in the position of our lease becoming illegal and the need to either find new trustees, or to run the allotments in a different way. Due to the responsibilities that are placed on trustees we have been unable to recruit new ones. It is also complicated and legally expensive to change them when needed as this has to be done via a solicitor. Additionally the city council wish to modernize the existing lease wanting us to take on a management agreement. But the most important thing first is for us to solve the problem that at the moment our current lease is not legal. It is the right time therefore to find a different way of doing things. Over the last 18 months or so the committee have looked into this and after exploring a number of options have finally come up with a plan, which will be acceptable to the council. The council have funded independent research into doing this and it has been carried out by the committee, primarily Jackie Medcalf. The proposal is that we change our status from a trustee based allotment association to a ‘not for profit CIC’ or Community Interest Company. What this means is that the allotments will be run along similar lines to a commercial company but with an asset lock which allows for profits only to be put back into the company (the allotments). It provides for an ongoing and easily administrated legal framework for the future.
The advantages to it are as follows:
- No individual trustees are required; these are replaced with the company and named directors. In the first instance committee members will carry out this task.
- It is easy to change or add directors of the company without the need to do this through solicitors, we merely inform Companies House in London and they adjust their records accordingly.
- This will mean the current lease remains in position for the 10 years left to run on it. However, if we adopt the new modern lease (which is still to be negotiated with the council) that lease would be for 25 years.
The disadvantages of doing this are these minimal:
- Each director will have a personal liability of £1 in the event that the company goes ‘out of business’ at some point in the future. Each year we have to submit official accounts to Companies House as any other company does, simply the current committee can do these however. The annual cost is £15.
All in all this new system is far and away better than the old one. The reason for explaining all of this is that the current allotment holders have to vote for or against adopting this new status. We are legally required to obtain a 60% agreement from all allotment holders in order to get the thing passed and adopted, and this is where you come in. You will be aware that the new rent regime comes into being very soon, in fact by the 1st October you will have been required to pay your rent again for a full year. On this years rent payment advice there will be a voting slip on which you will be required to vote either for or against the above proposals. Once voted upon we will then be able to inform the council of our ability to move forward or not.
In the event that we do not achieve a 60% agreement then we will have a problem inasmuch as the gardens will continue not to have legal status. In that instance we as a committee would have to think seriously about how we move forward and that could include handing the responsibility of running the allotments back in whole to the Nottingham City Council, who could then do as they wished with the allotment plot. Your committee would recommend that we avoid this at all costs as the future of the allotments would then be entirely at the mercy of the council and they could do with them as they pleased, this could include closing them and redeveloping the land if they wished to do so. Whilst there has been no such threat made by them, you should be aware that we would from that point on have no say in the future of running things ourselves.
Please feel free to talk to Jackie Medcalf about this, or ask questions personally, by phone or email if you are unsure or wish to know anything.
